Joanna Wallace works in paid media for direct-to-consumer ecommerce, with a focus on creative strategy, video editing, and creator and affiliate partnerships. She also describes doing recruiting work.
Blended ROAS can look healthy while acquisition weakens; use new-customer CAC and ROAS.
Use affiliate sales as an early signal before scaling creator partnerships with ad spend.
Ask creators for organic-style and direct-response versions instead of over-briefing one flattened style.
Check first: Confirm scope, deliverables, pricing, booking terms, and recent sponsored post results.
Main ideas
Blended ROAS hides whether a brand is acquiring new customers · Use affiliate performance to test creator partnerships · Brief creators loosely and ask for two versions, not one that flattens their style
Joanna Wallace works across paid media, creative strategy, video editing and recruiting for direct-to-consumer ecommerce.
Their posts turn practical problems into clear advice: measure new-customer results rather than rely on blended ROAS, use affiliate sales to identify creators worth testing with ad spend, and give creators room to find ideas a brand team might not choose.
They also write about effective DTC video editing and developing junior talent on paid-media teams.
Follow them for candid, applied perspectives on creative performance and the people behind it.
Wallace connects performance metrics to the creative and team decisions behind them.
In a post on measurement, they explain how returning-customer revenue can make blended ROAS look healthy while acquisition weakens, then give formulas for new-customer CAC and ROAS.
In another, they describe using affiliate results as an early signal before scaling creator partnerships with ad spend.
Their advice is not simply to control creative more tightly: after a video their team disliked performed exceptionally well, they began asking creators for both an organic-style version and a direct-response version.
These practical frameworks, paired with candid examples and writing on editing and team development, help brands decide what to measure, what to test and where to leave room for creative judgment.
Joanna Wallace’s recurring arguments center on honest measurement, testing before scaling, and protecting specialist skills.
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In paid media, they argue that blended ROAS hides whether a brand is acquiring new customers, while new-customer ROAS and CAC expose the problem.
For creator partnerships, Wallace treats affiliate performance as the test layer before paid amplification, asks creators for both an organic-style and a direct-response version instead of over-briefing them, and warns that choosing creators by follower counts and rates is guesswork.
On team design, they argue that AI has not replaced the junior paid-media coordinator and that paid-media video editing is a specific discipline with a real hiring bar.
Wallace also writes about recruiting creative strategists, including interview confidence and uncalibrated salary levels, and describes building an independent consulting practice with a recruiting arm.
Blended ROAS hides whether a brand is acquiring new customers
Wallace argues that the ROAS-versus-CAC debate is a distraction; the useful numbers are new-customer ROAS and new-customer CAC.
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Returning-customer revenue props up the blended figure, so an account can look healthy while top-of-funnel campaigns fail to bring in new buyers.
Acquisition campaigns that worked get cut because their ROAS looked worse than campaigns mostly reselling to existing customers.
NC ROAS will always look worse than blended ROAS, Wallace says—and that is the point.
Wallace walks through a scenario where ROAS looks fine, nobody intervenes, Meta keeps finding the cheapest warm conversions, and the number goes into the weekly recap.
Six months later, the P&L shows no new revenue.
They give two formulas: total ad spend divided by new customers for NC CAC, and new-customer revenue divided by total ad spend for NC ROAS.
Shopify’s first-time versus returning customer sales report provides the input data for free.
Wallace calls the result a floor because some new-customer revenue can still arrive through email.
Brief creators loosely and ask for two versions, not one that flattens their style
Wallace argues that a creator’s instincts can outperform a carefully built brand brief, and that over-briefing flattens the specific way they sell.
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The practical change: ask new creators for two versions, one in their organic style and one more direct-response.
If their instincts perform, Wallace leaves them alone rather than micromanaging.
They apply the same logic to affiliates: approach them for their particular way of selling, not to make them like every other talent on the roster.
A creator received a loose bulleted brief and returned a video the team found discombobulated, with no real narrative or value propositions—mostly saying "I love it" and "this is amazing."
The team added it to the sprint because it would not tarnish the brand and new formats deserved testing, even if they failed to match subjective taste.
It performed best.
Wallace does not claim to know why.
The post ends by calling creator pricing an unresolved guessing game.
In response to that result, Wallace changed the assignment from a single, tightly specified deliverable to a two-version request that leaves room for the creator’s own approach.
Paid-media editing is a discipline, not a general editing skill
Wallace argues that experienced editors from TV, documentaries, or other backgrounds still need to learn paid-media editing before working on DTC accounts.
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They write that strong editors who can learn fast but have no direct-to-consumer experience approach them constantly, and that there is no time to train people in the team’s specific needs.
The advice: watch the "10 rules of DTC video editing" episode before applying, then come back once you understand the material.
Wallace also recruits US-based paid media video editors with extensive paid media experience, and argues that most founders and strategists do not know what great editing looks like or why it matters.
Wallace directs editors pivoting into paid media to a specific episode before they apply for a job.
In a separate post, they seek US-based paid media video editors for a full-time staff role, noting that non-US citizens and people without extensive paid media editing experience cannot be passed on.
The editing-quality post is a teaser for that argument, not a full explanation.
Wallace wants to give editors a shot while maintaining a firm experience threshold, distinguishing general editing ability from paid-media readiness.
AI has not replaced the junior paid-media coordinator
Wallace argues that treating AI as a coordinator hurts paid-media teams in four ways.
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Overworked strategists throw spaghetti at the wall, waste ad spend, and burn out.
Skipping coordinators removes the internal pipeline for promoting future senior strategists.
Strategist salaries go to admin work, while admin bottlenecks slow creative testing, iteration, and scaling.
Burnout costs more than a coordinator’s salary, Wallace says, and promoting someone who already knows the account is cheaper than hiring senior talent from outside.
The post pushes back on the claim that AI eliminated entry-level jobs, arguing that companies made that choice themselves.
Wallace spells out the consequences: less time to think means fewer data-backed decisions; no bench means always overpaying for starters; and every week of slower creative testing gives a competitor time to pull ahead.
Hiring and pay calibration in creative strategy remain unsolved
Wallace writes about hiring for creative roles.
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Candidates who get offers, they argue, are not necessarily the ones with better answers, but those who talk about their work with conviction, excitement, and authority—and make the hiring manager feel the problem is handled.
Confidence in an interview is not about being extroverted, Wallace says; it means leading with what you have done instead of burying it.
In another post, they note that comparable creative strategist candidates ask for completely different salary ranges because the job title is new and nobody has calibrated what levels mean or what they should pay.
Wallace quotes a founder who passed on a candidate: "they seemed qualified, but they didn't come in instilling any confidence in me." The salary post opens a video about pay ranges for the same creative strategist role across different companies and experience levels.
An independent consulting practice with a recruiting arm
Wallace describes leaving a salaried role to build an independent business combining paid-media consulting, creative strategy, and recruiting.
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Recruiting recurs in the posts, including discussions of creative strategist hiring and pay calibration, alongside paid-media and partnership arguments. The material gives control over the work, a client roster, and a recruiting line alongside consulting equal weight with the services themselves.
Wallace lists setting up CreativeRx Consulting, building an international client roster, starting the recruiting arm, learning AI skills independently, and taking on speaking, coaching, and podcast appearances within six months of leaving a job. The post is a personal milestone update, not a methodology explanation.
Recruiting joined Wallace’s practice after it began with paid-media consulting and became a recurring subject in later posts.
Start here if the question you're trying to answer is "why does our paid social look healthy while revenue doesn't grow?"
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This is the clearest single argument Joanna Wallace makes about measurement, and it sets up the way the other posts treat testing and partnerships.
Blended ROAS and CAC can distract from the real picture when returning-customer revenue props up the numbers.
Wallace describes the pattern: ROAS looks fine, nothing changes, Meta keeps finding the cheapest conversions among the warmest audiences, and the figure goes into the weekly recap.
Six months later, the P&L shows no new revenue.
The problem starts upstream: top-of-funnel campaigns that never brought in new customers looked acceptable, while acquisition campaigns that did work were cut because their ROAS looked worse.
The post gives two formulas — total ad spend divided by new customers for NC CAC, and new-customer revenue divided by total ad spend for NC ROAS — and notes that NC ROAS will always look worse than blended.
That is the point.
It also names a free source for the input data: Shopify's first-time versus returning-customer sales report.
The result is a floor, not an exact figure, because some new-customer revenue arrives through email.
For brands planning a campaign
If you commission measurement or reporting work, ask for new-customer ROAS and CAC alongside blended figures, and specify which reporting source separates first-time from returning-customer revenue. A creative testing roadmap built on blended ROAS can fund campaigns that recycle existing customers.
Read this to understand how Wallace screens creators for paid partnerships.
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It answers the practical question brands face when a creator's follower count and rate card don't predict whether their content will sell.
Wallace calls partnership ads unusually effective but widely fumbled, and locates the failure in creator selection rather than strategy.
The post describes a client who tried whitelisting, sponsored posts, boosted content and large-follower influencers without improving CPMs.
Wallace's diagnosis: the team chose creators based on gut, follower counts and rates, without data on who could actually sell.
The proposed fix is to use affiliate programs as the testing layer: bring creators in as affiliates first, track which ones drive sales, and put ad budget behind the proven ones.
The logic comes from media buying — no ad goes into a scaled campaign before proving itself in testing — and paying on results keeps testing costs low.
The post carries an #ad label and points readers to an UpPromote guide on partnership ad strategies and its Shopify affiliate app.
For brands planning a campaign
Sequence a creator program so affiliate performance qualifies creators for paid amplification, and ask for affiliate-attributed sales data before committing partnership ad budget. This screening step can fit into an existing brief rather than requiring a new channel.
This answers "how tightly should we brief a creator?"
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It is the most concrete account of what happens when a brand imposes its own taste on creator content, and it changes how you write a brief.
Wallace describes sending a creator a loose, bulleted brief and receiving a video the team found discombobulated, with no real narrative, missing every value proposition and consisting largely of "I love it" and "this is amazing."
They added it to the sprint because it wouldn't damage the brand and because formats that fail subjective taste are worth testing.
It performed best.
Wallace doesn't claim to know why.
The change in practice is specific: new creators are now asked for two versions, one in their organic style and one more direct-response.
If their instincts perform, Wallace says, the team leaves them alone rather than micromanaging them.
The post argues the same logic applies to affiliates: brands approach them for their particular way of selling, not to flatten them into the rest of the talent roster.
It ends with pricing as an unresolved guessing game in creator deals.
For brands planning a campaign
Ask for both an organic-style cut and a direct-response cut, and budget for each. Note which version wins so the next campaign request reflects measured performance rather than internal preference.
Read this if you're hiring editors or deciding who should cut your paid social creative.
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It explains why an experienced editor from another field can still be the wrong hire for a DTC account.
Wallace writes from the hiring side of a paid media team and says experienced editors approach constantly with strong backgrounds and a willingness to learn fast, but no direct-to-consumer experience.
The stated position is that there's no time to train people into the team's specific needs, so the post directs serious applicants to watch an episode first — described as "10 rules of DTC video editing" — before applying, and invites them back once they have the material down.
The post itself does not contain the rules; it points to a linked episode.
For brands planning a campaign
When hiring freelance or staff editors, ask specifically for direct-to-consumer paid media experience rather than general editing experience. Expect ramp-up costs if you hire someone making that transition.
It is the post where the working setup is named — the consultancy, the client base, and the recruiting work that runs alongside the paid media practice.
Wallace describes leaving a job six months earlier and building an independent business in that period.
The list includes setting up CreativeRx Consulting, building an international client roster, starting the recruiting arm of the business, teaching themselves AI skills, and taking on speaking, coaching and podcast appearances.
The recruiting side recurs elsewhere in the posts: one entry describes founders and hiring managers making creative strategist offers, and another covers salary ranges for the same job title across different companies and years of experience.
The post is a personal milestone update rather than a methodology piece.
For brands planning a campaign
If you want creative strategy and creator-partnership help, plus support hiring for those roles, this post shows both services are available through one practice. Treat recruiting as a separate service line with its own scope, not as part of a creative engagement.
Read this if you're deciding whether to replace entry-level paid media roles with AI tools.
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It explains what specifically goes wrong on the account when strategists absorb that work.
The post makes four arguments: overworked strategists throw spaghetti at the wall and waste ad spend; skipping coordinators removes the internal pipeline for hiring senior strategists; strategist salaries get spent on admin; and admin bottlenecks slow creative testing and iteration.
Wallace expands on each point: burnout costs more than a coordinator's salary, hiring senior talent from outside is more expensive than promoting someone who already knows the account, and creative-testing speed is at stake.
The closing question challenges the claim that AI eliminated entry-level jobs, arguing that companies made that choice themselves.
For brands planning a campaign
If your plan depends on AI tools absorbing coordination work, price the strategist hours that shift to admin and the slowdown in creative testing into the proposal. This is an argument about team design, so it belongs in a resource plan rather than a creative brief.
Paid-media video editing standards and editor pipeline3
Recruiting and pay calibration for creative strategists3
Creative testing roadmaps tied to the account, not a template2
Creator partnerships: affiliate-first testing and two-version briefs2
New-customer acquisition, not blended ROAS1
AI does not replace paid media coordinators1
New-customer acquisition, not blended ROAS
In a post about ad measurement, Joanna Wallace argues that blended ROAS hides returning-customer revenue and can make an account look healthy while new-customer growth stalls.
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They point to NC ROAS and NC CAC as the numbers that expose the problem, and name a free starting point: Shopify's first-time versus returning customer sales report. They calculate NC CAC as total ad spend divided by new customers, and NC ROAS as new-customer revenue divided by total ad spend.
Use Shopify's first-time versus returning customer sales report; calculate NC CAC and NC ROAS from total ad spend, new customers, and new-customer revenue.
Wallace describes the calculation as a floor because some new-customer revenue may still come from other channels, such as email.
For brands planning a campaign
A DTC brand assessing paid social can ask Joanna Wallace to set an acquisition measurement frame before scaling spend: separate new-customer revenue from returning-customer revenue, review top-of-funnel campaigns by NC ROAS, and avoid killing acquisition campaigns just because their blended ROAS looks worse.
Creative testing roadmaps tied to the account, not a template
Joanna Wallace describes a keynote on building a creative testing roadmap tailored to a product, season, stage, and account health, and says one-size-fits-all creative strategy has never fit anyone.
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In a separate post about paid media editing, they focus on helping editors understand DTC paid media needs rather than generic video experience.
Fit creative testing to product, season, stage, and account health.
For brands planning a campaign
A brand can evaluate Joanna Wallace for a creative testing roadmap tailored to its account conditions rather than a fixed calendar, and for guidance on what paid media editing must do within that roadmap.
Creator partnerships: affiliate-first testing and two-version briefs
Joanna Wallace writes that partnership ads can perform strongly but often fail when teams pick creators on gut, follower counts, and rates.
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Their proposed testing layer is affiliate: bring creators in as affiliates first, track who drives sales, then put ad budget behind proven ones.
In another post, they describe asking creators for two versions—one organic, one direct response—after an ad the team disliked performed best, and warn against overbriefing.
They open the partnership-ad post with attention-grabbing claims such as 4X CTR and 20–30% lower CPMs.
Run creators as affiliates first, track sales, then scale proven creators; request organic-style and direct-response versions; use a loose brief and avoid micromanaging.
The posts promote UpPromote's playbook and benchmark tool, making the vendor recommendations part of a commercial integration in the source material.
For brands planning a campaign
For creator partnerships, Joanna Wallace can be assessed on a testing system that pays for performance before scaling paid amplification, uses creator sales data rather than follower count, and preserves creator-specific style instead of flattening every brief.
Paid-media video editing standards and editor pipeline
Joanna Wallace has posted about the gap between experienced editors and the specific demands of DTC paid media.
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They say editors pivoting from TV or documentaries should learn paid media editing before applying because they do not have time to train them on the team's needs.
They also recruit US-based paid media video editors with extensive paid media experience.
Another post argues most founders and strategists do not know what great editing looks like or why it matters.
For brands planning a campaign
A brand can use Joanna Wallace to evaluate or build a paid-media editing pipeline, set expectations for DTC editing quality, and distinguish strong general editors from those who already understand direct-response paid media. The posts set an existing-skill bar, not a training-first offer.
Joanna Wallace argues that treating AI as a coordinator hurts paid media teams: overworked strategists throw spaghetti at the wall, waste spend, and burn out, while companies lose a bench of future strategists and slow down campaigns.
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They say hiring junior staff protects strategist time and creates an internal pipeline.
For brands planning a campaign
A DTC brand considering AI to absorb entry-level paid media work can ask Joanna Wallace for a team-design view that weighs coordinator cost against strategist burnout, admin bottlenecks, campaign speed, and bench strength.
Recruiting and pay calibration for creative strategists
Joanna Wallace writes about recruiting for creative roles, including a founder who passed on a qualified candidate for not projecting confidence, and the difference between having good answers and making a hiring manager feel the problem is handled.
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In another post, they say comparable creative strategist candidates ask for very different salaries because the role is new and levels are uncalibrated. A further post describes leaving a job six months earlier, forming CreativeRx Consulting, building an international client roster, starting a recruiting arm, and taking on speaking, coaching, and podcast work.
No publication dates appear in the posts here, so the sequence between the recruiting posts and the six-month business update cannot be confirmed.
For brands planning a campaign
A brand hiring creative strategists or paid media talent can evaluate Joanna Wallace on candidate positioning, interview confidence, and role-level and pay calibration. This is most relevant when a brand is building the team that will run the creative testing roadmap.
Across the posts, Joanna Wallace tends to lead with a contrarian or blunt claim—such as 'ROAS is the biggest lie in your ad account' or 'AI is not your coordinator'—then explains it through a client or hiring example, numbered reasoning, and a practical next step.
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The posts mix paid media math, short narrative, humor, and recruiting case studies. Several point to longer videos, podcasts, or episodes.
Lead with a claim, then use a concrete scenario, list, or calculation to make the argument.
For brands planning a campaign
A brand can evaluate Joanna Wallace for candid, example-led explainers, paid media education, or internal workshops. Their style suits an audience that wants a clear point of view and practical steps; it is less suited to a neutral, heavily hedged brand voice.
The posts document a small number of explicit commercial connections: a labeled paid promotion for UpPromote, an owned consulting business called CreativeRx Consulting, and an announced conference speaking slot.
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No named clients, employers, sponsors, or investments appear beyond those; the recruiting work and client roster are described without naming any business. Ask for the names of clients and other commercial partners if they affect the decision.
UpPromote
Disclosed partnership
A post promoting UpPromote's Proven Ad Strategy Playbook carries the #ad label, describes UpPromote as the leading affiliate app on Shopify, and recommends running creators as affiliates first to find which ones drive sales before putting ad budget behind them.
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A separate post links to UpPromote's benchmark tool for deciding what to pay affiliates and which partnerships to pursue, without repeating the ad label.
In a post marking six months after leaving a job, Wallace writes that they registered CreativeRx Consulting, built an international roster of clients, started the business's recruiting arm, taught themselves AI skills, and landed speaking, coaching, and podcast appearances.
Announced as a keynote speaker at the Operators Podcast Growth Summit, Wallace will present how to build a creative testing roadmap that fits a product, season, stage, and account health.
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The post says the session runs February 18, 1-4pm EST, and registration is free. Ask whether the speaking slot is paid or sponsored.
Joanna Wallace's posts offer a practical route through three connected areas: measurement, creator testing, and specialist paid-media skills.
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Start with their new-customer ROAS argument for a clear example of how blended numbers can hide weak acquisition, then move to the creator-partnership posts for the affiliate-first testing system and the two-version brief that leaves room for a creator's own style.
The editor and team-design posts explain why paid-media video editing and junior coordinator roles are specific disciplines rather than interchangeable work.
The recruiting posts extend that point to hiring and pay calibration for creative strategists.
Use the tags to follow paid-media measurement, creative testing, creator partnerships, DTC video editing, and recruiting.
Similar creators offer adjacent angles on DTC paid social: Jim Schroën on UGC ads, editor hiring, and AI search visibility; Nativ Yanko on new-customer acquisition and mechanism-led creative; and Levi Steede on creative diversity and the gap between AI-assisted strategists and hands-on designers and editors.
Jim Schroën also works on DTC paid social creative, UGC ads, and the editor-plus-creative-strategist team model.
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Their hiring post seeks editors who can turn concepts into converting ads and work closely with strategists, overlapping with Wallace's paid-media editing and recruiting posts.
Schroën's posts centre on building an agency team and getting brands cited by AI shopping tools through affiliate and creator content. Wallace's work centres on new-customer measurement, affiliate-first creator testing, loose two-version campaign briefs, and the coordinator and editor pipeline.
Nativ Yanko runs a DTC creative agency and makes the same core argument about acquisition: blended ROAS can look healthy while a brand recycles existing buyers, and NCPA is the number that matters when scaling cold audiences.
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They also work on creative strategy and testing for DTC brands.
Yanko's collagen example walks through a full mechanism-led ad build, and they package Claude skills for creative teams. Wallace focuses more on measurement formulas, creator-partnership testing, and paid-media team design and hiring.
Levi Steede works on paid-media creative strategy and pushes back against AI-assisted strategists who produce generic output without moving the account.
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That concern with protecting specialist creative skill echoes Wallace's arguments about paid-media editing and junior coordinators.
Steede's posts focus on creative diversity as a way to reach different demand pools and on the pay gap between strategists and designers or editors. Wallace focuses on new-customer ROAS, creator and affiliate testing, and DTC editing readiness.
The only measured audience figure published for Joanna Wallace is their LinkedIn follower count: 4,585, recorded on 9 October 2026.
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Posts from 1 July 2025 to 16 September 2026 show who the writing is aimed at: paid media and creative practitioners, and the people who hire them.
Selected examples include a call for US-based paid media video editors for a full-time role, with an update that non-US applicants and editors without paid media experience cannot be passed on; guidance for editors pivoting from TV or documentary work into DTC paid media editing; a claim to have worked with hundreds of editors across dozens of DTC brands; a recruiting post about interview confidence and why a candidate was passed over; a post on how wildly salary expectations differ for the same creative strategist title; and a breakdown of NC ROAS and NC CAC for DTC ad accounts.
Two posts are sponsored collaborations with a Shopify affiliate and influencer marketing platform.
For a campaign aimed at DTC ecommerce marketing professionals, that points to a professional audience inside ecommerce marketing rather than a consumer or end-shopper audience.
A sponsored placement is a plausible way to reach people who run, buy, or staff DTC paid social and creator programmes, but a weak signal of consumer reach or product sales.
The sponsored posts fit that reading: B2B commerce-marketing vendors are paying for access to this following, though the share that is brand-side, agency-side, or job-seeking is not measured.
Before committing budget, request recent platform demographics and results from one or two comparable sponsored posts to check audience composition and delivery against the follower figure.
LinkedIn followers
4,585
LinkedIn account record for joannalynnwallace · 2026-10-09
The posts show two commercial relationships a brand can plan around: sponsored LinkedIn content for a marketing-software company, and paid-media consulting through Wallace's own business, CreativeRx Consulting.
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They also recruit paid media video editors for brands, which is staffing support rather than an influencer engagement.
Ask Wallace directly to confirm scope, deliverables, pricing, and booking terms.
The sponsored placements are disclosed in-post with an #ad tag, setting the baseline for how a paid placement would be labeled.
Sponsored LinkedIn posts
Buyer requirement
Send a written brief and the product or offer details they should write from, while leaving the angle and voice to them rather than scripting a read.
The UpPromote placements point readers to a downloadable strategy guide with a tracking link, so plan around a resource the audience can act on instead of a straight product mention.
Agree on disclosure wording before publication; the disclosed placements carry an #ad tag.
Paid-media and creator-program consulting
Buyer requirement
Bring account-level data, not a channel summary.
Wallace's published advice argues that blended ROAS hides new-customer performance and points brands to Shopify's first-time versus returning customer report as the free source for NC ROAS and NC CAC.
Without new-customer reporting, the analysis stalls at the first step.
Expect recommendations on creative testing sequence, creator selection, and ad-budget allocation, along with the two-version creator instructions they describe: one organic-style cut and one direct-response cut.
Affiliate-first creator testing programs
Buyer requirement
Plan for creators to work on affiliate or other performance terms before committing ad budget.
Wallace's stated method is to bring creators in as affiliates, track who actually drives sales, then scale paid spend behind the proven few.
You need attribution by creator and a low-cost way to pay on results.
Creators are selected for how they already sell, so heavy briefing or homogenized scripts work against the approach.
Video editor staffing and recruiting
Buyer requirement
Treat this as a hire, not a content project.
Wallace's posted call for editors specified a full-time staff role, US-based candidates, and extensive paid media editing experience.
They ask editors pivoting from other backgrounds to learn the DTC specifics first.
A DTC ecommerce brand running paid social wants better creator partnerships and more new customers, not more revenue from people who already bought.
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Joanna Wallace fits both needs, for specific reasons.
On measurement, Wallace argues that blended ROAS quietly props up the account with returning-customer revenue, and that the numbers that matter are NC CAC and NC ROAS.
They give the arithmetic — total ad spend divided by new customers for NC CAC, new-customer revenue divided by total ad spend for NC ROAS — and point to a free source for the input data: Shopify's first-time versus returning customer sales report.
They also describe the failure pattern: ROAS looks healthy, nothing gets touched, Meta keeps buying the cheapest conversions from the warmest audience, and acquisition campaigns that were actually working get cut because their blended ROAS looked worse.
That is directly useful to a brand that suspects its paid social is recycling existing customers.
Wallace also says plainly that NC ROAS will always look worse than blended, so it is not a metric a brand adopts to feel good.
On creator partnerships, Wallace treats affiliate as the testing layer: bring creators in as affiliates, track who actually drives sales, then put ad budget behind the proven ones.
They compare it to media buying, where nothing goes into a scaled campaign before proving itself in testing, and note that paying on results keeps the cost of testing low.
They also warn against the selection method most teams use — gut, follower counts and rates — and against over-briefing.
They describe a creator video the team disliked that went on to perform best, prompting them to ask new creators for two versions: one in their organic style, one more direct-response.
Both approaches appear in the posts here.
Two constraints shape the fit.
First, this is a professional audience, not a consumer one.
The only measured figure is 4,585 LinkedIn followers, and the content is written for paid media and creative practitioners and the people who hire them.
A sponsored placement reaches ecommerce marketers and operators, which suits a B2B commerce-marketing vendor or a brand recruiting that talent.
It is a weak route to end shoppers.
Second, the working relationship would be consultative and voice-led rather than scripted: sponsored posts are disclosed with an #ad tag and point to a downloadable guide, and Wallace objects to flattening a creator into a uniform brand script.
A campaign that brings account-level new-customer data, a defined offer and room for their angle is the version these posts support.
Ask directly about scope, deliverables and price; no rate card or published booking terms appear in the posts.
When to choose a specialist
A consumer packaged-goods brand wants a creator to produce short-form video for TikTok and Instagram aimed at end shoppers, selected on follower volume, delivering a scripted brand message, with blended ROAS as the reporting target and a guaranteed reach number up front.
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This is a poor fit for reasons the posts make concrete.
There is no consumer-facing channel here — the only measured account is LinkedIn, with 4,585 followers — and nothing in the posts is consumer product content.
The writing is aimed at paid media practitioners, editors and hiring managers; the two sponsored posts are B2B placements for a Shopify affiliate and influencer marketing platform.
Nothing supports consumer reach or product-sales delivery.
The proposed selection method is also the one Wallace argues against.
They describe teams picking creators on gut, follower counts and rates with no data on who can sell, and propose affiliate performance as the screening step instead.
A campaign that selects on follower volume and expects a guaranteed reach figure asks them to work against their own stated method.
Blended ROAS as the reporting target is the third conflict.
Wallace's published position is that blended ROAS is misleading and should be read alongside NC ROAS and NC CAC, or not used to judge scaling decisions.
A scripted brand read is the fourth.
Wallace's stated practice is to brief creators loosely, ask for an organic-style and a direct-response version, and leave creators alone when their instincts perform.
A tightly scripted consumer spot with fixed copy is the opposite of that.
One adjacent mismatch is worth naming: if the campaign also expects them to develop raw or non-DTC editors during the engagement, the posts point the other way.
The posted call for editors requires US-based candidates with extensive paid media editing experience, and Wallace says they do not have time to train people to meet the team's needs.
That is a hiring search with a search cost and a salary budget, not a training offer.
A worked campaign example
Angle: "Stop re-selling your customers to themselves."
The campaign is a measurement reset plus a creator roster proven on results before any paid amplification.
For the DTC brand described above, it runs as roughly a twelve-week sequence, starting with the brand's own account data.
Weeks 1–2, baseline.
Pull Shopify's first-time versus returning customer sales report and compute NC CAC (total ad spend divided by new customers) and NC ROAS (new-customer revenue divided by total ad spend) for the trailing two quarters.
List every top-of-funnel campaign cut in that period for weak blended ROAS and re-read it against new-customer performance.
Expect NC ROAS to look worse than the blended figure; that is the point.
Treat the result as a floor rather than exact, because some new-customer revenue arrives through other channels such as email.
Weeks 3–6, creator testing.
Recruit 8–12 creators into an affiliate program and pay on results, keeping the cost of finding out who sells low.
Select on affiliate-attributed sales, not follower count or rate card.
Brief each creator with a loose bulleted set of value propositions rather than a script, and request two versions: one in their organic style, one more direct-response.
Log which version wins and by how much on the brand's own metrics.
Do not flatten creators who sell into each other's style.
Weeks 7–10, scale.
Move only creators shown to drive sales into partnership ads or paid amplification behind their content.
Fit the testing sequence to the product, the season, the account stage and account health rather than a fixed quarterly calendar — Wallace argues that a one-size-fits-all roadmap does not fit anyone.
Weeks 11–12, staffing and reporting.
If editors are needed to cut paid social creative, budget for a hiring search with a salary line rather than an internal training program: the posted bar is US-based candidates with extensive paid media editing experience, and Wallace says there is no spare capacity to train people in DTC specifics.
Report NC CAC and NC ROAS alongside blended figures, and stop treating a healthy blended ROAS in the weekly recap as evidence of scaling.
Before kickoff, settle engagement scope, deliverables and price; no rate card or published terms appear in the posts.
Agree on disclosure wording for sponsored content; the disclosed placements carry an #ad tag.
Give Wallace the account data and the offer, and leave the angle and phrasing open.
This work does not promise a specific ROAS improvement. It is a method a brand can ask Wallace to run and test against its own numbers.
Choose Jim Schroën when the need is to produce a high volume of UGC and paid-social ad edits at agency scale, or when AI-search visibility is part of the goal.
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They post as GoViral, an agency that creates UGC ads for DTC brands every day, and are hiring full-time remote editors to edit short- and long-form paid social, UGC, VSLs and direct-response ads alongside creative strategists.
A second post argues that the same creator and affiliate content running as social posts is what AI tools pull from when recommending products, and cites 58% of shoppers now using AI tools to find products.
For a DTC brand with a production-throughput gap, or one that wants creator content treated as an AI-visibility asset, this is a closer fit than a measurement-led consultant.
The tradeoff is scope.
The two posts cover building a production team and AI citations, not deciding which creators to scale.
A brand that needs an NC CAC and NC ROAS reset and an affiliate-as-testing-layer roster should ask for those directly.
The hiring bar is specific and demanding — strong DTC experience, brands spending €100k+ a month on ads — so staffing to this standard requires a salary budget, not a quick fix.
Choose Nativ Yanko when the brand wants an agency to build and run the ads, particularly in health and wellness, and when the problem is cold-audience conversion.
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Their posts walk through a UK collagen example end to end: research the ad account, product ingredients, competitor landscape and personas; build the persona from account metrics, reviews, comments and surveys; teach why the problem exists, agree with the buyer's scepticism, then give the mechanism; choose the format last, arriving at a 90-second mini VSL; and track NCPA rather than blended ROAS.
A second post shows a set of Claude skills built for the agency's daily work — TOF scripts, hook variations, creative briefs pushed to Notion, a viral-concept translator, static ad copy.
This is the closest alternative to the measurement discipline in the campaign fit section, with a full production and AI layer.
The tradeoff is that this is an agency that makes the ads, and its posts are agency marketing.
The collagen example describes the method rather than independent results, and the posts focus on one category and one market.
The creator-partnership testing layer — bring creators in as affiliates, pay on results, put media budget only behind proven sellers — is not the subject of these posts; they cover creative strategy and copywriting methods instead.
A brand that already has creators but cannot tell which ones sell should ask whether creator-partnership testing is part of the service.
Choose Levi Steede when the symptom is a spend plateau and the likely cause is that every ad targets the same persona, motivation, awareness level and promise.
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Their posts draw a hard line between fake creative diversity — new hooks, a different creator, new captions — and true diversity that changes the who, the why, the awareness level and the primary promise, arguing that only the second sends distinct signals and produces incremental reach.
A second post questions AI-era creative strategists who prompt-and-paste, and notes the pay inversion between strategists and the designers and editors who can carry an ad from hypothesis to finished work, citing an experiment converting a senior designer into a strategist through a copywriting course.
For a brand that has exhausted surface variants and needs to expand its audience pools, this diagnosis is the useful contribution.
The tradeoff is that the framework is conceptual.
A brand that wants the new-customer measurement reset and affiliate screening process should ask for account arithmetic, a creator roster method and a step-by-step testing roadmap.
The second post also points toward paying and structuring a creative team differently, an organizational change rather than a campaign fix.
Joanna Wallace has 11 LinkedIn posts, and the public profile shows 4,585 followers as of 9 October 2026.
The posts do not carry publication dates, so they cannot be ordered in time; where this page describes a change in approach, that reflects what the posts say rather than a confirmed sequence.
Several posts link to videos, a podcast episode, a guide, and a summit registration page.
The contents of those linked items are not described here.
Posts by three other creators appear in the similar-creator comparisons only.
No audience survey, rate card or booking terms, or results from past paid placements are described here.
